


The girl who governed earthquakes (while letting others govern her)

by Matarreyes



Series: Who they become (always depended only on them) [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Skye reclaiming her beliefs and her conscience back, Skyeward - Freeform, Skyeward in later chapters, not SHIELD friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3104069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matarreyes/pseuds/Matarreyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her new life starts as she shakes the dust off her clothes and re-orientates herself. There are no people by her side. There are no bodies, either. No bloodstains and no bleeding wounds, nobody who needs her to check their pulse or be dragged to safely. She starts to run before her soul can shrink with the sickening knowledge that the chunks of rock she crunches with her military boots are made of her friend's flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Five times Skye thought about or saw Grant Ward after the events of Who they become. Companion piece to "Who they become (always depended only on them)", which contains Ward's side of roughly the same events. Second in the series of the same name.

The first time Skye thinks about Ward, she does not identify him by name or face. In fact, she doesn't identify him as Grant Ward at all. There is a fleeting image of a fallen body and a shaking compound that flickers in front of her eyes, threatening to develop further, and she does everything in her power not to delve on it.

Her new life (she doesn't know it then, but only because she doesn't stop to think for hours after the fact) starts as she shakes the dust off her clothes and re-orientates herself. There are no people by her side. There are no bodies, either. No bloodstains and no bleeding wounds, nobody who needs her to check their pulse or be dragged to safely. Just rocks and dust still floating in the air, and deep down she thinks (knows) that she's been spared a gruesome spectacle. She starts to run before her soul can shrink with the sickening knowledge that the chunks of rock she crunches with her military boots are made of her friend's flesh.

She finds her own (Coulson, Mack, May) easily enough and they continue to run together, the ground shaking all around them, and Skye can feel each quake coming in perfect synchrony with her own heart clenching. She is helpless to control either - heart or earthquakes, not now, not ever.

"Trip's dead," she says. "Crushed," she adds out of breath, looking at May because May is the one who won't offer her any emotion. It's the complete truth, too. The other truth (that he didn't prove to be satisfactorily special to a goddamned stone) will stay forever buried in his underground grave. 

The temple crumbles, and so does the entire Hydra base on top of it, and the Bus takes off leaving behind a city in shambles and more questions than they were prepared to seek answers to. Everyone talks and only Coulson listens, and among the chaos he still takes a little time to pat her on her back and ask whether she's alright. She feels so grateful for the small gesture, she feels like crying and hugging him and never letting go. She doesn't, though, and she continues to be the little perfect soldier he needs by lying automatically, explaining that the Obelisk is finally destroyed and that her specialness was all about being able to touch it. She doesn't mention Trip again. She also doesn't mention the overwhelming feeling of her heart (her blood, her breath, her soul, her nails, her eyelashes, everything) being in synch with the destructive shakes. It doesn't sound quite SHIELD worthy, anyway. And definitely not to be discussed on a small plane packed with people. 

If something does come out of it, she'll talk to Coulson later.

Back to the base, everyone disappears to lick their metaphorical wounds. Fitz and Simmons run back to the lab together to check Mack's readings, Hunter and Bobbi are nowhere to be found. Mack is installed down in the vault until his checkups clear him. May pairs up with her yoga exercises. Skye is left alone, and she hangs around the entrance to Coulson's office like an overgrown needy child until it becomes clear that the Director doesn't have any time to spare for her right now. There is dust under her skin and in her hair, and she can't bring herself to wash it off - it feels a part of her, a part that will always be there from now one. The more time passes, the more she feels like she should have spoken up already, but the idea of opening her mouth becomes harder and harder. The next day, she feels like that proverbial driver who wasn't even at fault but who run away from the accident in a moment of panic without offering first aid, and ended up looking guilty to everyone around. She feels stupid and weak and as far from the team as she was when she first came on board with a secret and an agenda and found out that she was an 084. Except she's a full agent now. She doesn't fool around and she doesn't look out for herself alone. She follows protocols and works for the improvement of SHIELD. She follows protocols... and she dreads finding out what they dictate in her case.

So she occupies herself with gathering news from local news sites and NSA satellites and compiling them in a neat little presentation that looks very useful (agents who are useful don't get pulled out of their useful activities to do stupid debriefs, right?). The destruction on her screen is heart wrenching, no wall left standing and no structure recognizable, for all she knows most of the debris belongs to the camouflaged Hydra base. Some of the footage allows her to see an enemy jet taking off, but all in all she can't track any real evacuation. People (nay, not people, hidden Hydra agents) who were inside the base are probably all dead, and she reports this objective conclusion to Coulson when she finally makes it to his office the next day. The day after the... How are they naming yesterday? It feels like it should have a name.

Coulson looks down at her images and nods, and they speak about the extent of the destroyed Hydra firepower and she's already told him that the Obelisk itself had ceased to exist, so that's the end of it. The SHIELD Director calls the operation a big win "despite the loss of a friend and an excellent agent", which surprises her even if she can see the tactical advantage gained by shooting Hydra's leader in the head and putting down about fifty enemy agents. 

"Whitehall could have been the highest ranking Hydra officer this side of the Atlantic, but another head will rise as soon as news reach the highest command," continues to say Coulson in his official tone. "The buildings collapsed almost instantly once the quake came, but I'm sure some rats still managed to run away quickly enough."

"I'm sure that some did."

She smiles grimly while her mind conjures images of gray nameless uniformed men hurrying to run away from falling debris in an almost comic fashion. Next thing she knows, one of them is hit by a big falling boulder and there is a pool of broken flesh and blood where he stood. She blinks, and is all set to get righteously angry at her stupid subconsciousness (these guys tied her up and would have killed her on command, they shoot the Bus, they never had even a beginning of a conscience and only just followed commands), but once her brain gets stuck in that particular direction all she sees are more images of men being squashed to death by falling boulders. It's not bloodless at all, like Trip's death has been. If anything, she must be overdoing the goriness of it. Or so she hopes. God, she certainly hopes she does. She hears the faint scrunching sounds, smell the saltiness of spilled blood, sees the whiteness of mangled bones sticking from under the rubble. The boulders fall in perfect synchrony with her accelerated breaths, and she can feel the bile rising up at the realization.

"Skye?" Coulson asks, because it must be obvious by now that something is wrong with her.

"I killed them," she says, and cannot tell if her voice is just as level as before or harsh or maybe pitched. "I called the earthquake during my transformation." 

And just like that, yesterday now has a name. It's not a Victory over Hydra Day, not Destroy the Obelisk Day. It is the Day of Skye's Transformation. It will become official in hours, but she doesn't know that yet. All she knows is that she feels the bones of people that she never knew crunching under her fingertips, come undone under her breaths, be smashed by her steps. The images of unknown men running away from her doesn't feel comic anymore. They feels hopeful, like they are doing the exact thing they should. She closes her eyes and forces herself to imagine them reaching fresh air and safety, she forces herself to think about that lone jet she saw taking flight. She takes deep breaths, stands up and leaves Coulson's office without paying any heed to words, commands and formal protocols. 

She wants to run, but she remembers how her running steps amplified the trembles of the earth, and doesn't. She walks very measuredly to her bunk and checks her pulse, and does her mental exercises. She keeps taking measured breaths until she's almost in control. And then her eyes fall to the guns she'd been using on her latest missions and to her storming gear, and tears start falling freely.

It's not the fact that she (probably) has dangerous powers now that's smothering her. It's not even the fact that she (probably) has killed dozens of people less than 24 hours ago. It's the realization that she's been doing it all before, and until reaching double digits on her victims she didn't even notice it. She sees herself running toward a Quinjet - the secondary object of their first ever real mission - while soldiers behind her fall to the ground and clutch at their chests, and it's her finger on the trigger that has done it. A young man, almost a boy, stumbles under the impact of her bullet and falls backwards from a frozen ship into a freezing sea. A lone figure slumps against the wall and slides toward the floor, shock and pain written in every line of his body. There is no face and she fights tooth and nail to not whisper a name, but still the outline of him is the one that lingers. The blood is spreading quickly, and she knows he could not have stood up right then, much less run quickly enough. Him, she realizes, she killed twice. 

May would be proud, she thinks hysterically. May said pulling the trigger never became easy. May lied (again). It's very easy, has been from the beginning. It's easy when you primary objective is to keep your heartbeat steady, when there's a sniper rifle to look through, when it's from behind (element of surprise, they called but they never mentioned that people will still try to look back at their executioner with their dying breath).

There was a time she couldn't pull the trigger to save her life (disarming someone is one thing, pulling the trigger quite another, the faceless man had warned her once). Less than a year after she's doing nothing but pulling triggers on disarmed men, it seems. She looks back and can't even decide how she managed to be so stupid for so long. Becoming a field agent was never about earning a badge, or exchanging her skirts for a jumpsuit, or losing her sense of humor while putting on a pair of sunglasses that screamed "governmental toolbag". It wasn't about target practice. It is, and always has been, about one thing only - whether she'd be able to systematically take human lives, or not. 

She guesses that she now has her answer.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes her the rest of the day to calm herself, but Skye is not the one to wallow for long. She feels exhausted but calm, and she sits down to do some soul searching. She's a certified SHIELD agent now and killing SHIELD's enemies is a daily part of her job. Bad as it sounds, it had been her own choices that led her here, there is no way around that one. She isn't interested in ditching responsibility - all she wants is tracing back to how she came to be.

It's easy enough to know where to start. A little more than a year ago, she set out to finally decipher her origins. She had zero field training, but the plan she'd come up with still made her rather proud. She wanted SHIELD to come to her, and she designed her transmissions to be just the kind of incendiary to attract attention but still harmless enough so that the governmental toolbags wouldn't have any cause to do her harm. But fabricated as they were to fit her needs, she didn't say anything she didn't think in her transmissions. She hated these guys. Really hated them. The concept that a hidden organization thought itself wiser and better than oneself, saw itself as legitimated to decide one's fate, could reach anywhere and do anything and one couldn't do anything about it was terrifying. The only reason she hadn't been afraid when Coulson opened the door to her van was because it was parked in the middle of a busy town. It didn't save her from her first ever kidnapping, but then again she didn't have anything to lose. She's come to the end of all her leads, and she was stubborn enough to risk being unlawfully detained and taken to a secret flying spy base to be unlawfully interrogated. Later on, the fact that Coulson hadn't been after her, but after Mike Petersen, was what had helped her calm her mind during these first terrible hours in their hands. 

She'd put the first foot in, and later won her definitive ticket by being useful and just rebellious enough not to seem too eager. It didn't mean she trusted, or even liked these people. She flirted with the shy hot guy, made fast friends with the scientists, and steered clear from the big shots. She went out of her way to seem clueless and enthusiastic, up until the moment she got stupidly busted over some stupid Miles scheme.

That was the point where everything changed. Miles was caught, used, then neutered and thrown out of the Bus like a piece of garbage. She cheered on (the money part had been stupid, but the hack itself wasn't anything she wouldn't have done on her own), but inside of her the girl who'd been thrown out of too many foster homes had been withering. Not even because the incident had meant the end of her search for truth - but because she'd once again have to stand in front of a wide solid table and hear the verdict about not being a good fit. It should have made her feel angry, but the only thing she felt was heartbreak.

And then, the miracle came. Coulson didn't throw her out. He didn't make her feel like a failure. He listened. He god damned listened, and Skye would have sold her soul for a person to do that just once in her life. The promise of help was just the cream on top of the biggest cake she ever seen in her life. 

She still had absolutely no intention to become an agent, though. She was a hacker, someone who acted stealthily and preferred to use her brains, not sheer force. The physical training seemed useful, though, and hey, one would have had to pay a small fortune to get trained by a guy like Ward every day out there in the real world. And so she (half heartedly) trained along.

Then she got shot. Waking up, all she remembered was being angry. At herself, for being such an idiot. At herself again, for being so so weak. At Quinn too, for seeing right through her, but mostly at herself. She didn't quite remember what she told Ward while making her point about further training. She could easily have said she wanted to become an awesome field agent in hopes to come through to him. She did know what she meant deep down. She wanted to learn to defend herself, and never be made feel weak again. That was all. SHIELD hierarchy, their inner workings, promotion packages and black badges still meant nothing to her.

That didn't mean that she was completely unaffected when she finally did receive her badge, though. The badge meant that she finally had a tangible link to the group of people around her. Something that showed everyone that she belonged somewhere. Something that would guarantee she'd not be sent away from Fitz and Simmons. From the Bus. Something that made Coulson smile proudly down at her. Something she wanted to shove into the faces of all these families who had abandoned her while saying "look how awesome I am, look how stupid you were to turn me away"

(Except maybe they didn't, did they? Maybe all these women cried just as much Skye every time she was being taken away. Maybe the words "bad fit" were SHIELD's, not theirs.)

Then Hydra happened, and the meaning of that little black badge was turned on its head. Suddenly it wasn't about "them" abandoning her anymore. It was about she would be abandoning them. And she couldn't. Not in a million years. She would not do that to the only people she'd felt close to in forever. They had stood by her, and it was only fair that Skye would stay by them. She did whatever she needed to do to help. Anything. And anyone who didn't, anyone who went away to the private sector or joined other agencies or simply didn't stick with SHIELD - Coulson called them traitors and she completely agreed. One didn't abandon one's family. Not when they were in need.

They run, and run again, and finally they settled. A semblance of old order was grievously needed, that much she understood. Coulson was at the end of his wits, and she'd been glad to help by putting on a little obedience show for his sake. She trained endlessly, she heeded May's every instruction, she stood up and said yessir and still she never once questioned what it all meant, doing all this. Finally being an actual SHIELD agent.

Coulson knew. And May. And Trip (before the... Just before). Skye could imagine what they'd say, if she asked them. A SHIELD agent worked to protect people. From what, though, was the question she had no heart to ask her downbeat colleges. From dead aliens? From the truth? From the truth about dead aliens? From themselves? The answer should be easier now: they protected people from the rise of Hydra. Yet thinking back, Skye was unable to came up with one single person they'd managed to really protect. No faces came to mind. No thank yous. Moreover, she was sure she had not only not protected - she had not spoken to anyone outside of SHIELD in months. Even their intel was gathered not through thankful protégées, but by lying to or seducing unsuspecting victims. 

It was exclusively a SHIELD vs Hydra all out war, with "civilians to be protected" more of an abstract entity in incendiary speeches that Coulson used to keep them motivated than a real occurrence. Their little hidden community were the sole saviors of the world, but exclusively because they saw themselves as such. Skye was completely sure that she alone could move at least 5 other governmental agencies to act against Hydra by planting subtle intel inside their nets, but Coulson wouldn't have it. No exchanging of intel, no collaboration, zero contact with the outside world were the rules of now.

So instead of hacking her way to more recourses, Skye got stuck with training with increasingly big guns. Because SHIELD needed agents, not hackers, and firing guns was what agents did. They shot people on orders. They never questioned them. Skye never questioned Coulson, but mostly because she could see the bags under his eyes and didn't want to add to it. It didn't make her any less of an agent, though. It just made her an agent with a load of daddy issues, it seemed.

All this remembering makes her go even further into the past, to an incident between a little girl named Mary and a hopeful mom called Mrs. Brody who took her to nice shops and bought her nice dresses. It had been the only house little Mary had ever lived in, and there had been a big piano in the ample first floor sitting room. One day, Mrs. Brody had sat little Mary down in front of it and tried to show her the basic exercises. Skye still remembered how hopeful the woman had looked, and how uneasy she herself had felt in front of the instrument. In the end, little Mary had scrunched her noise and promptly said that she didn't want to be dressed up and she didn't want any piano lessons. She'd wanted her slingshot back instead.

How old had she been then? Nine? Ten? She'd called that woman Mom and she'd wished on the wind and the sky and the clouds she'd let her stay, but she never contemplated wearing the dresses she had hated and playing the instrument she had no interest in, in order to boost her stay. When had the little Mary become wiser than the grown up Skye?

Skye looks through her black gear and for the first time asks herself if she really wants to be wearing it. She cocks her guns and asks herself why her go-to weapon is a long distance rifle that has zero defensive capabilities but is great for picking up targets from a distance. She tells herself sternly that this is probably what she'll still going to be doing when she's 50 years old like May: wear black and say yessir and destroy men with a pull of her finger. The rifle falls out of her shaking hands at realizing that she'd never wanted any of this.

She wants her friends to be safe, yes. She wants to help people - real people who'd thank her for it and smile at her. She wants to walk out in the light and not have an earpiece in her ear. She wants not to feel ashamed of wanting these things. She wants to not feel like crying.

But she didn't choose her own name to sound like the sky for nothing. She didn't fight Mrs. Brody on her piano lessons just for kicks. She is pretty sure she can find a solution to this. So she sits in her room and thinks until her wants and her needs and her opinions are all sorted into little boxes and she's pretty sure she can make her point. She wanted to learn to defend herself, and she had. She'd become a field agent, but she's a hacker at heart, and will forever be a better hacker than a killer. And she's good with people (she misses it - just coming up to anyone and chatting her way though a situation instead of creeping in the darkness until she's in position to strangle them). There is so much she can offer Coulson that doesn't involve blood and violence. Fitz and Simmons and Mack... These used to be her kind of people, and they can be again. May will be disappointed, but Skye isn't May. She certainly admires her, but she still understands the stoic woman just as little as she did when she was ranting about her back on the Bus.

She knocks on Coulson's door, and there is no answer, but she lets herself in all the same. The Director is working, but he stills when he sees her, and the lack of formal bullshit makes her hopeful. They can be a family again. It wasn't taken from them, it wasn't destroyed by "the enemy". They lost it themselves - the team nights, the beers, the chats, the connection. Hydra had nothing to do with it.

She sits down, fidgets a little. Thinks back on the conversation she had with the man, when she came clear to him after the Scorch fiasco. He liked old stuff... And he respected her. This was the cornerstone Skye had build all her SHIELD life around. She only wishes she felt as courageous now as she felt back then. She is a trusted agent now, not a double dealing Rising Tide girl.

Coulson is patiently waiting. Skye realizes that he knows what is to come, and feels relieved to know they're on the same page.

"I don't think I should keep being a field agent," she says at last, and it's totally like telling her imaginary father she doesn't want to go to college and wishes to pursue an artistic career instead (and yes, she'd roleplayed even that one in her head in her teen years). She feels her breath catching while she's waiting.

And then Coulson nods, and she grins, and why was she so nervous about this again? They understand each other. She'd seen him through the craziness of the GH serum, seen him at his worst. He'd done the same for her, and forgiven her. And he'd totally be that super- liberal dad who taught his kids about honor and justice and fairness, and then simply let them discover themselves... If he was a dad, that is.

"I'm glad that you have come to me, Skye. I have been sitting here wondering how to breach the subject for a while."

"Missed lunch again?" She grins.

"And breakfast. And dinner last night. Ever since Fitzsimmons brought back the preliminary results from San Juan." She blinks and waits, and Coulson must sense it as he hurries along with the explanation while turning the pages of a paper file with her name on it. "It won't take them long to design the battery of basic tests. We have no facilities right now, but any deserted place will probably suffice."

She doesn't say anything to that. She doesn't know what to say. Her neat little boxes with questions of morality and death and weapons never contained anything of the sort. She's feeling a little stupid that they didn't. She thought she had it all figured out, but apparently she was so far off base, it's not even funny.

"Fitzsimmons are working on it?" She asks.

"Of course they are. It's not the first time we have to deal with something like this. We will figure out your parameters in no time, thankfully the protocols are very straightforward. You just take it easy meanwhile."

She nods, stands up and leaves. Once he door is closed, she stays motionless in the corridor and has no idea where to turn. The lab is out of question. The firing range, her favorite spot as of late, has lost all of its appeal. She doesn't feel like facing anyone in the kitchen, now that her status has been changed not to "SHIELD computer expert" as she wanted but back to "unknown variable" that she hates. 

She very seriously contemplates the door that leads to the Vault D, and wonders rather histerically if she should just move her things in there. She kind of wants something to hit, kind of wants to go back to Coulson and this time be unreasonable about the entire thing, and the stupid cage feels like a good idea to deal with unwanted tension. She worries them now, isn't that the real reason she's being taken off the agents' duties? And if she shows that she's willing to stay in the cage, wouldn't it make everyone feel more relaxed? They could even kill her in there, if they deemed her dangerous enough. Pull the air out. It only takes a minute - she's seen the footage.

In the end, she knows it's just the anger talking. She knows they are all her friends, Coulson the first among them. She's just angry because this happened to her, and she can't change her life the way she only just decided to and has to drift along with whatever Fitzsimmons will tell her. She opens the door and sits down on the steps that lead down into the depths of the vault. There are no cameras on the stairs, they're all focused on the cage itself. She wonders if she's going to be able to cry a little in frustration, since it's such a secluded place, but in the end she thinks back on the nine years old Mary sitting in the back of a car and watching the Brody house disappear behind the trees, bits her lip and doesn't.

Mary's gone, and Skye's gone, and neither were ever prone to tears. There is this weird thing called Daisy now, and she's going to have to figure her out. She'll look at the tests and learn more about the gifted index. She can see the usefulness of it, both to SHIELD and to the New Entity Daisy. She's not killing anyone, though. She will use this weird Obelisk thing to protect, not to injure, she swears.

And if there is a little voice deep in her head telling her that protecting one side will always and forever involve hurting the other, if there is an after echo of Ward's voice pleading with Fitz to understand that he was trying to give him a fighting chance against the man he was so misguidedly trying to protect, she steadfastly ignores it.


	3. Chapter 3

Everyone is friendly. And understanding. And very very kind. Simmons makes a point to explain every procedure that Skye has to undergo. Two times. She fluctuates between two extreme modes: over protectiveness toward Skye the person and scientific enthusiasm toward the... other aspect of Skye. Fitz hovers in the background, and the day she actually hears him mutter something along the lines of them both being freaks now is the day that she actually goes down to the Vault and screams.

She isn't a freak. He isn't a freak. They both are fully functional, awesome people who have been through a lot. By freaking choice - to work for SHIELD, to risk their lives for a cause they've made theirs. They chose to undergo these risks, they gambled constantly for months and gotten lucky every time. Except one single one. And even then, they were lucky enough to be alive and on their feet, still doing stuff, surrounded by friends. They shouldn't wallow in self pity, or push everyone away, or hide in darkened corners and avoid everyone's gazes. They should keep doing the things they love doing. They shouldn't act like their lives are over.

She screams until she isn't as infinitely frustrated, and then goes back to the lab, takes Fitz by his shoulder and tells him all of this in reasonable, indoor voice. She honestly expects it all to help, but only ten minutes later Simmons storms in, having probably seen then them on the monitors. She gives Skye a poisonous look, envelops Fitz in a bear hug and whispers to him, and hurries him away from Skye like she's something poisonous and he's an actual cripple in urgent need of her protection.

Skye fumes. She has something to say to all this, but she doesn't. She takes the tablet Simmons has left on the table with more empty vials marked with her assigned gifted code, takes her own blood sample (in hurts, and the skin of her elbow will be sore and violet tomorrow) and leaves as well. They never speak of it again. They never speak about much of anything after that incident, as Simmons allegedly has enough samples by now and needs time to process them in the sanctuary of her biohazard lab. 

It's May who stays by her the most. She flies her out to the desert and then drives her several kilometers away from the jet as an additional precaution. The end of the journey, Skye makes alone. She has a heart monitor, a brainwave monitor, a mini video camera and May's steady voice in her earpiece for company. She is to try to make the ground shake (she can't). She's to try again while May screams angrily at her. They'd planned it, and it reminds Skye of all the bad bootcamp comedies she used to watch and laugh at as a teen after she ditched the orphanage (she can't). She's to try again as May shoots at the ground near her with a sniper rifle. This, they hadn't planned. It doesn't feel funny anymore. The sun is settling and the desert stops being bright and hot and rapidly becomes silent and cold and full of long, finger like shadows (she shakes a little, and still she can't). Whatever they do, she can't. As she walks back to the jeep and tries not to lose her footing in the near darkness, she tries to decide whether it's a positive sign of her autocontrol or a disappointing sign that she's useless to them now. She wonders if she can convince May to give her a sign one way or another.

May's face betrays nothing.

She gets a can of hot coffee and a cold sandwich for dinner while the older agent takes off. Skye absently plays with the sand that is coming out of her shoes until the question she'd been reserving for Coulson unexpectedly makes its way to her lips.

"Have you even been to the Fridge, before?"

She knows that Coulson had. May shakes her head, but there isn't enough conviction in her frown to make Skye stop with her line of questioning.

"But you know the protocols on dealing with gifted?"

"Every agent knows," May says.

"I'm an agent," she smiles, but only barely. Whether by will or circumstance, she isn't one anymore. She should be happy about it, but she isn't. She might not be an agent, but she's an asset. Skye may not know the protocols for handling them, but she'd met some. Scorch and Donnie. Donnie and Scorch.

She is 100% certain that Coulson won't let the same things that happened to them happen to her. 

She is 100% certain that she is ashamed of that knowledge.

Things are quiet for a while. Skye reworks all of the new SHIELD networks, because it's all she is good for, now. Nothing she does seems to trigger her so called powers, and after a month she starts to hope that it's only a matter of time that she's allowed to go back into the field. Without Trip, it's only May, Hunter and Bobby making the rounds, and it's not enough. Skye doesn't talk to Coulson (she has nothing useful to say anymore), but she knows she only needs to wait out. Her hacking skills aren't what the Director needs right now. Force - brute or subtle, it doesn't really matter - seems to be the thing. She tries to remind herself that she didn't want to be an agent anymore, but what else can she be? How else can she be of help? The bags under the Director's eyes get bigger every time she sees him (every other week or so), and she tells herself that she doesn't need to resort to violence maybe, that she can run all the subtle, lay low, talk sweet missions May and Bobby aren't really suited for, and ignores the voice that reminds her that sweet lies can be the most damaging ones.

Her patience is rewarded after another month goes by, when Coulson calls her into his office again. The walls are painted by the blue light of the holo projector, and it's obvious there is much going on that she hasn't been briefed about.

"I want you to get in touch with Ward," he says, and all Skye can do is gasp wordlessly. Ward is dead. By her controlled rage the first time, and by her uncontrolled rage the second. The rage has been gone for a long while, now, but the death it left behind remains. 

Coulson calls up a video feed. It's Ward, all right. His hair is only a little bit longer than it has been when she had last seen him, his clothes a forever nondescript black. He walks into the footage with a high end sniper rifle on his shoulder, stops and looks back, seemingly waiting for something. After a second, a May doppelgänger walks up to him. She has another heavy weapon on her - Skye can't identify that one, but it seems to her that she's holding it with a somewhat exhibitionist flair. The question of whether they're aware of surveillance is answered as both grin into the camera with identical shit eating, condescendingly amused expressions, looking for all the world like the cross between world's most weaponized hicks and weirdest action heroes. Agent 33 proceeds to gun the camera down, and just like that, the footage stops. 

"Both have been popping on our radar for the past three weeks, always around Hydra facilities. I was trying to figure out where they operate from, but after this little exhibition last week the trail has gone completely cold. I need you to figure out where he hides."

"And then?"

She had once argued that Ward needed to be put down. More then once, actually. The practical implementation of that theory didn't bring any of the perks Skye has expected it to. She didn't feel freer, safer, mightier or generally better off after squeezing the trigger. She felt like what she was - a more accomplished killer. 

"Then we will use him to get to Agent 33 and turn her. She can be a wonderful asset to us, if Ward can be made to let her go."

Finding a person, any person, is very easy. There is typically a card trail and a rent (spies don't do rents, though). There are regular visits to the doctor for anti flu prescriptions (spies don't do flu either). The sightings, until they stopped, were hopping all across the globe, suggesting an extensive net of contacts which Ward isn't supposed to have. It's what bothers Coulson the most - that he's managed to sell his skills to a third organization after burning his bridges with both SHIELD and Hydra. Phil thinks it's in his character to play extremely qualified and ruthlessly obedient left hand to more powerful players. Skye agrees, kind of. Ward had always been weak that way. Dependent on orders.

She has her own orders to fulfill, though (it feels so good to know that she's needed, after months of flailing). Spies don't do rents or flus, but they do get hurt when they misread their enemies. Skye searches hospitals for any admission for bullet injury to the right thorax area in the week following San Juan on the off chance it'll give her a fake name. There are 79 cases, 31 of them young white men. She sorts through the records expecting to get a feeling for the right one, but gets none. Almost all clinical notes have mentions of the family hovering around, asking for clarifications, giving consent. Ones who don't have any family are eventually shipped off to rehabilitation clinics. Some are transferred to jails. Some (more than she expected) have some kind of psychiatric history on their backs, but no file mentions slit wrists. She quickly leaves that search aside and reads on about complications, lung drainages, pneumonia, complex antibiotics, muscle and nerve damage and randomly remembers that Ward was holding his rifle on his left shoulder, with his left hand.

He seems to have lucked out on the complications, or skipped the hospital altogether and barreled through the entire thing. He might have, based on what she knows of him. It's weird, to realize that most things she knows about him aren't lies. Shield-Ward and Hydra-Ward were both rather indifferent to injury to his body.

She finds him on pure chance. The name Grant Ward is introduced into the system to run regular checks every three days, even though she doesn't expect him to use it. There are always a couple of guys who pop up. Grocery bills, tickets to opera in San Francisco, a library card. None of them is the guy she's searching for, he'd never be so sloppy... Until she checks the library card on a whim and there is a copy of Matterhorn mentioned right there.

She doesn't tell Coulson right away. The location is a beat down mining settlement in the middle of nowhere, and it's entirely unclear why Ward would ever choose to lie low there. He doesn't have access to any place that isn't hours away through appalling side roads. There are also no other electronic trails of him around the town. It's like he'd given his real name to the librarian of a whim, if it's even the Ward she's looking for. The membership has been activated two months ago, and that detail ends up convincing her. The rest of the books he'd checked out are all too varied, and honestly Skye doesn't have a good enough grip on his tastes to come to any conclusions on her own.

She tells May, because it's still not good enough to bring to Coulson and she wants (needs) to ace this assignment. Strangely enough, a little operation is a go. She gets some gear and a SUV and cash, and is instructed to go do close surveillance.

She's bewildered until she realizes that all her movements will be observed from afar, more of a test for Skye than a real field operation by her. May doesn't deny it, and it's that little fact that makes Skye squirm all the way to the Nowhereland. May doesn't deny it because she doesn't see it as something wrong. It's what SHIELD has been doing since forever. It's normal procedure... So why is Skye even upset about it? All she needs to do is ace the mission and she will be back to the field on no time.

The town isn't big enough to waltz right into it, so she camps on the outskirts and sets up surveillance. Finds some prehistoric CCTV cameras to hack into and watch from afar (it's a damn miracle there is Internet and electronic registry in the library, and she wonders if that was the reason Ward let his guard down around the place). After months enclosed by the Playground walls and high tech and talks about superhuman powers, she feels like she's playing pretend, heating her cans of food on a little gas camping stove and sleeping under the starry (and very cold) sky. Three days in, she's sure she's hallucinating human voices taking to her from the bushes around her little hiding place.

Ward comes into town 5 days later. He appears from the east, riding a nondescript motorcycle (it looks nice and maneuverable and quick enough, but not too fancy for the locals to give it a stinkeye). There is a trip to the grocery store, to the newsstand, to the tank station. To the library. Skye makes her move then. The library is new and doesn't look to be quite popular, and it's a good civilian free place to (not) have a confrontation.

Coulson wants Agent 33, not Ward (or so he claimed), but Skye knows she'll have no chance to track Ward through the countryside once he goes back to his hiding place. Open spaces for miles, treacherous road dust, his own state of high alert. She doesn't notice him looking around, but she knows he does. He's not favoring any side, and that alone is a play. Injuries like that don't go away so quickly - she's read enough reports to know that now.

If she can't track him back to Agent 33, she'll take another route. It's not something that May has specifically told her to do, but it makes perfect sense. Ward might be a formidable fighter, but he has a weakness the size of the Titanic hole. Skye. Skye is the hole, and she'll play on that to convince him that she needs him. He'll love that one. It's all he ever wanted - to be helpful. To her. To Garrett, before her. So she'll be his Garrett in a way, which does sound dirty to her own ears, but it's her first field mission and May is watching, so she has to prove herself. Not as a shooter, but as an all-in-one dream of an agent able to also manipulate and gain advantage and sweet talk and lie. It's for Ward's own good, ultimately, because he isn't going to surrender to SHIELD, and he's going to end up with a bullet to the head this time. So in a way, Skye is taking the minimal damage route. He taught her that, by the way. When he sweet talked her to avoid threatening her outright over the encrypted hard drive. It's a sucky thing to do, but in hindsight it also seems kind of... noble?

She pulls her gun on him in order to stop overthinking this. 

He stares back at it. At her. Skye can tell that he isn't happy to see her, which is both very logical but still surprisingly unexpected. She vividly remembers his face when the wall of the vault came down for the first time. He had such a childish, happy, out of it expression, it had given her nightmares afterwards. A normal person doesn't look like that at his jailers. 

She remembers asking Coulson what his deal was. She doesn't remember getting an answer.

Whatever his deal was then, it's certainly expired now. His face is so carefully neutral, it's unnatural in its own right. And he's waiting, which is good strategy, because now Skye is forced to speak. She replays her objectives in her mind, sets the ground strategy. To make him do what she wants she has to wrangle his free will away from him first. The way she did in the vault, the way Garrett used to. So she starts with the basics - the count of his deeds, a couple of taunting assumptions of his current activities. She's paying all attention she can to the reaction her words get from him. It's not much. He's kind of letting it all wash over him, like it's all not about him at all (and maybe it's not, Skye only has Coulson's ideas on what he's been up to, and for some reason Coulson's the most biased person of them all when it comes to Ward). So she eases up, goes for the carrot, tells him that they need him. She needs him. That there is something he can help them out with. 

It's all he ever wanted, right? He and his weird, dependent personality that only allows him to function when he's being issued orders. She wishes she'd realized it sooner. Used it sooner. He'd have been a perfect SHIELD asset, no weird powers or creepy brainwashing or shots to the chest necessary. Just some old fashioned, give a starving dog a piece of bone conditioning. Garrett used it, but so what? SHIELD has never been adverse to taking pages or even entire chapters from Hydra's manuals. 

"I'm sorry," he says, and there it is. She's in control again, and the relief is palpable. All she has to do now is wait for him to say his piece and convince him that he's needed, and proceed from there. He'd checked out a couple of books this time, including some generic chic flicks a guy is likely to get for a girl if he's feeling specially clueless. So he definitely knows where Agent 33 is. 

He's through with his apology, one that Skye hasn't listened too closely to. And he's looking at her with an open, expectant expression, and she flounders for a second because if feels like he's expecting her to do something in return. When she doesn't, he thankfully doesn't act upset - he just shakes his head a little in frustration, looking for all the world like a junior agent failing to properly communicate his misgivings about a mission to his handler. 

"Evidently it came out wrong," he mutters under his breath. And then he lifts his head, squares his shoulders and looks her in the eye, barreling straight on. "I am very sorry, and I won't bother you anymore, I promise."

The entire conversation is getting nowhere, fast. Skye is starting to feel frustrated. He is not as amendable to her as she had thought, and the idea of pulling him down forcefully and stomping on him doesn't feel attractive in the slightest. She doesn't want to kill whatever self awareness he's managed to achieve, even if it's for his own damn good. She isn't Garrett. 

"You aren't bothering. You're being given another chance." Her mouths is moving pretty much on autopilot now. She can't be rethinking her mission on the go. Advanced agents can, but she's not here yet. 

"Good bye, Skye," he says, and there is a second of flailing between hearing the words, noticing a shift in Ward's body and a dismayed mental wait, what?

He takes a step back, and there is an uneasiness in his body language and a fleeting tightening around his eyes cannot be faked. It's not a full blown flinch - more like a superspy equivalent of it, but she'd seen his dismay as her bullets hit his body and she'll identify that expression anywhere. 

Idiot, she thinks for herself. He's cautious of her now, of course he would be. And May's party is probably somewhere close, something he might actually be more aware of than Skye herself. So she changes tactics completely, makes her body melt in a bid to appear unthreatening, just as she did back at Providence, as she did the last time they talked across the electric fence. There is no fence now, and she takes advantage of that. She lifts her hands to his chest, and the contact is just weird because it has been months since she had a skin on skin contact that didn't end with a needle prick. But she's an agent and her mind is on autopilot and she plays with the buttons of his shirt and smiles and this is how Very Dangerous People convey being non-threatening, right?

Right? 

There is no needle from Ward, but there is an intake of breath (sharp, tense and definitely not pleasant) and he's stepping back again, and the look in his eyes is not one she's going to cherish this night. He never turns his back to her as he makes his retreat, and it's a statement that needs no words to be spoken. 

She makes contact with May an hour later (the older agent tries to trace him as he leaves the place, but fails). They don't talk much on their way home.

"I think he's finally seen through me. A shower of bullets will make anyone get the message," says Skye when the silence gets too old and too thick to breath through, and hopes it's humorous enough to prevent further conversation. It's not, and she feels the need to add in a low tone. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

And if there is a image in her head of Ward using these same words while reporting to Garrett that his cover was blown after she and Coulson jumped out of the Bus, she ignores it. She wonders if she's ignoring too many things lately. She didn't use to be the willfully blind kind of girl, but then again, she didn't use to be an embodiment of some nightmarish force of nature. It doesn't help that, for the first time since Puerto Rico, she feels like she could truly make things move and tremble and break, if she wanted to. 

She sits quietly by herself the entire flight back to the Playground instead.


	4. Chapter 4

She's back to being an asset. Back to rarely get out of the Playground, to rarely participate in meetings, to train. Only one thing is new: the feeling that she doesn't care. She guesses that she should be more upset about it, but the energy to be upset isn't there either. 

Her powers are much more controllable now. She never notifies this fact publicly, but somehow everyone comes to know. May doesn't train her directly, but she can make little localized quakes in furniture and such. She gets better at it by simply letting time pass and not forcing the issue. It might be that she can make true earthquakes now. Nobody tries to find out, and Skye least of all.

Somewhere down the road, she realizes that people are worried about her. Later on, she can tell that they move on, leave her alone to her devices. Later still, Coulson comes up with the weird idea of making her his secretary or something, because suddenly he starts taking her along for his directorial trips. He quips and talks to (at) her during their flights, as May pilots. Skye always answers - she's become good at automatic answers. Sometimes she wonders if they realize how detached from everything she is. She could find out, if she cared (she doesn't). She could wonder if Coulson is worried, or hurt, or clueless (she doesn't). Everything seems to take up too much energy and she wonders if she's ill, if the transformation took something from her or is killing her slowly. The thought doesn't scare her in the slightest, and doesn't make her reach out to Simmons when she sees her again.

Sometimes she wonders if she'd feel better if she allowed herself to cry just one time. The last time she remembers crying was when May told her to stop fooling around looking for her family and start being a good little agent. Start fighting for common good (back when SHIELD and Hydra were one, so who knows what common good she was supposed to fight for). She thinks she might hate the common good, the old and the new versions of it. She'd much rather keep looking for her family. Except that she's found it - two options to choose from, haha, two sets of fathers that would fight one another for her affection. Most people would count her too lucky. She feels dirty instead.

Coulson tells her they're taking an outside trip to the nearby airfield to meet up with the team. It's short notice, but it's not exactly the first time (being confined to the Playground makes her easily available). Skye knows that Fitzsimmons and May and Hunter have been gone on a Bus trip, but there is no reason they can't land it directly inside the base. She doesn't ask, though, only checks her side weapon and drives Coulson all the way to the meeting place. The Bus has already landed, the ramp is open. Coulson leaves the vehicle and starts walking towards it with an attitude more suggestive of a public relations visit than of an informal briefing. She follows two steps behind like a good bodyguard. She can repel stuff too. She'd make a very good bodyguard. Better than May. Except that she can't imagine herself spending her entire life guarding anyone. Submitting her life to the agenda of another like May does.

There is an injured woman coming out of the Bus, overtired and wobbling with exhaustion and with a face as raw as piece of beef meat. It's kind of horrible, and Skye begins to wonder whose prisoner the poor woman has been and for how long, when she realizes that Ward - Ward of all people - is trailing behind her ready to support her if she stumbles to the ground. 

She's kind of pleased by the sight, to be quite honest. Ward has been hunting down Hydra holdouts last she heard of him, and obviously one had contained prisoners and he had called Fitzsimmons to deal with them... It's very mature of him, really. Much better than the aimless destruction he's been up to after escaping the Vault. It's not until Coulson steps forward and addresses the woman as Agent 33 that Skye understands that the horrible, raw face of the woman is a result of an (obviously planned, but somehow not important enough to mention to Skye) operation. Which means that Ward hasn't called them willingly and SHIELD has finally succeeded to get their hands on the unlikely duo, which also explains the itchiness May can't quite hide away. Her gun is on the ready as she trails behind the surrounded pair.

Or maybe Skye is reading something wrong.Coulson starts speaking and it sounds like he's selling the benefits of SHIELD to 33, which he wouldn't do if he thought himself to be in complete control. Three sentences later, and it becomes clear that he's trying to turn the woman. Which, considering the way she's swaying on her feet, is rather cruel strategy. She might sell her soul for a chair right about now. 

Agent Palamas doesn't sell her soul for a chair upon hearing the offer of a full pardon and a position under SHIELD. She actually pulls herself up and starts to... growl? Her eyelids are so swollen it's a miracle she can see at all, but what can be seen of her eyes sparkles daggers in several directions. She might be a Latina, Skye thinks - darkish skin, defined cheeks and proud nose. She certainly speaks with the flair and self confidence of one. The general meaning of her speech is that Coulson and SHIELD in general can go pleasure themselves in the privacy of their operations base, and get their dirty hands away Agent Palamas. They weren't there for her when she needed help, and now that she's back to being an awesome operative they don't get to try to re-recruit her. Or something to that effect with much more creative swearing than Skye has ever heard or would be able to reenact.

She is at a loss of what is going on here, and for the first time in weeks she's openly angry about it. The woman seems to think that SHIELD never did anything for her, but hasn't Simmons only just given her her face back? Why did she accept it, if she was dead set against SHIELD? And why did she drag Ward into it? The fact that he's still breathing is a miracle in itself, considering that he has an armed and seething May at his six. He doesn't seem too worried about that, though, openly gaping at his companion instead. There is a faint, but trademark childish awe in his eyes that Skye has only known directed at herself. Skye wonders if she'd have the audacity to signal for him to get a grip and run if he paid her any attention. She sort of wants to - Coulson wants Palamas, and as soon as he has her he'll put a bullet in Ward's head. She's tired of the concept of a bullet in Ward's head. It feels like the world has other problems that require more urgent solving than Ward and his continuing existence.

Agent Palamas stops talking and starts walking, and Ward trails exactly two steps behind. His attention is mostly on her, and his right hand hovers a little every time she looks less than stable, but it's been a mistake for Skye to think that he's unaware of the hostiles all around him. He certainly knows about May and her guns. He also gives Skye and Coulson an indirect look and is careful not to come too close to either of them. As soon as he passes them, he does something with his hand and a roaring sound can be heard somewhere behind Skye. A cloaking comes off and a military jet appears, engines howling and turbines catching speed.

"So this is how they keep moving all around," mutters Coulson.

"You're going to let them go," says Skye. Her voice is neutral. Her posture, too. Her pulse is probably the exact 60 beats per minute. 

"He has a kill switch," answers May.

"A bomb?" She falters.

"We have no effing idea," chimes in Hunter coming up behind them. "But he organized all of this, so it stands to reason he'd protect himself before coming on board of a plane full of people who desire to skin him. Mutually assured destruction is never worth the risk."

"He inactivated half of our agents 24 hours before a crucial mission, then bargained his services for her face," scowls May. 

"That's thoughtful of him," Skye says off-handedly. Ironically. In passing. Laughing off the incomprehensibility of it. She has no idea what she's thinking anymore, except that it's not safe for her to say it out loud. One of the things she's sure of is that 33, unlike herself, appreciates Ward's brand of attention. When people find themselves alone, they pretty much stop looking the offered help in the mouth.

Horse, she corrects herself a bit hysterically. Offered horse in the mouth... Or something. The sun is high in the sky, and she suddenly remembers that it's been weeks since she's been outside. Months since she's been on her own, doing something she wanted. It's hot and quiet and the bees buzz quietly and she's never been an outdoorsy girl, but somehow she's missing the way an occasional breeze would play with the fabric of her old dresses.

"We have to figure out Ward's play, it's obvious that she's still brainwashed," says May, and suddenly she finds herself walking in the direction of the old Hydra jet. Or maybe simply away from the team. She just doesn't feel like staying there and listening to nonsense anymore. It's pretty much an obsession at this point, because frankly? Skye's the one who got fooled, the one who got hurt the most by him. And she's over it already. Absolutely over, and if Ward wants to have someone else under his wing, then maybe they should let him. And 33 is so obviously happy. Not brainwashed happy. Not compliant. Just grinning up at him, even if moving her face muscles must be painful as hell right now. It's pretty damn obvious that Ward is not controlling her, specially for people trained to read body language. 

The Hydra jet is turning slowly in preparation of taking flight. Ward is in the cockpit, running pre-flights. Skye waits to see if he'll look down at her. She tells herself magnanimously that if he does, she just might signal him good luck, but his eyes remain fixed on the runway ahead of him and the opportunity just doesn't come. The jet takes flight, and she tells herself that she actually didn't want to make any visual contact. What she does want is to take a very long and very quiet walk. 

And so she does. 

And once she starts, she simply doesn't feel like stopping.


	5. Chapter 5

She starts anew, or so she tells herself. May has no hope to find her, not without Skye's own expertise anyway. She hates feeling like she run away like a grumpy teenager, when in reality she’s a trained agent. She had good reasons. She should have come to them, made a stand. She goes on having countless conversations with Coulson in her head where she explains. She argues. She cries and rages at him. 

She knows that she'll never manage to say any of this out loud. Before? Yes. Now… It’s different in all the ways she doesn’t want to think about. That's why slinking away without a goodbye is for the best. 

Sometimes, she just wants to curl in a ball and run back to SHIELD. Needless to say, she never does it. She wouldn’t call it her defining moment (it’s an everyday occurrence anyway), but stubbornness is absolutely her defining quality. 

Nameless again, homeless again, she realises very soon that she needs money to live. Hacking her way through is the safest, easiest option. She "commissions" a van from a used cars dealership and hacks the police records two days later to erase the notification of the robbery and get the thing gets registered to her new name (something empty and unassuming and plain, Rose Johnson, and the presence of flowers doesn't even hit her until days later).

She tries to get some hacking jobs, but it’s harder now than it used to be. Once her eyes have been opened to the inner workings of the secret agencies, she can easily tell the unsavoury intentions behind most of them. And anyway, she doesn't have a name in the community anymore, so it's not like she'd get the job even if she wanted it. She hesitates for weeks before she looks up Miles, and establishing contact is an exhausting procedure that takes days of careful planning. She has kept in contact with some outsiders who she never knew personally, but the core of hackers she used to be part of - she can’t expect them to welcome her with open arms after she openly pledged her skills to SHIELD and left Miles out to dry. 

She persists, though. If anything, he should talk to her out of sheer curiosity.

When she has found her backdoor, she spends several hours biting her nails and munching on cheese flavored chips, nervous and excited. She hasn't talked to anyone in weeks, and the wild child impersonation is starting to get very old.

_> Long time no see_ is her opening move.

There is no immediate answer despite the fact that she knows Miles is on the other end, and she is left wondering if she's started out too casual. The last time they saw each other, she was staying with SHIELD and he was being kicked out in the middle of nowhere with no means to support himself. Considering the condescending speech Skye gave him despite the fact that both were working against SHIELD up to that point, it's quite possible that he's still pretty pissed.  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_> yes?_ comes the laconic reply.  
_>  
_> how are you?_ she tries for a nicer approach.  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
The line blinks for a long time before Skye concedes that even this attempt at heartfelt casualness isn't working the way she imagined it should.  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_> I'm back to being a free agent_ she writes finally, going for sincerity when everything else fails.  
_> the whole men in black spiel didn't quite work out, so...  
_> what about you?  
_>  
_>  
_>  
_>  
She can see some background activity and knows that Miles is about to start talking. There is an image that appears on her screen. Not a video connection - that would be careless of him, so she doesn't feel upset lack of trust. It's just a photo, and it takes her a while to understand what exactly she's seeing. It's a bad quality picture of a hand, she figures out eventually. A right hand. There is something about it that she should find meaningful, so she keeps looking, and yes - there is something horribly wrong with it. She feels it first and understands it later, because the angle is awkward in a way a picture made with a left hand would be...

Then she gets it. The tips of all the fingers except the thumb have been chopped off. They're old wounds, but the places where the stitches had been are scarred and still noticeable.

She feels nausea coming up at the sight - it's both a commiseration with a fellow keyboard user and the fact that Miles is showing this to her. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to keep talking to him anymore.  
_>

_> didn't have a single penny on me.  
_> couldn't speak their language.  
_> 60 km to the nearest big city - 12 hours walking - locals wouldn’t help - drunk some rainwater - got an infection - they cut the bootleg meds with chalk apparently - clogged the arteries – gangrene.  
_>  
_>  
_> betcha your spy sugardaddy thought it funny

She can remember the smugness in Coulson's voice explaining that he was letting Miles go and fetch for himself without any money or means to prove his identity to any US embassy out there. With the bracelet that'd ensure he couldn't get any electronic access anywhere. Without speaking the language of the country he was in. After having brought him onto the Bus without a warrant and having transported him over 10+ borders. 

Ironic punishment. Illegal, petty punishment because SHIELD could never have Miles prosecuted without revealing the existence of the gifted to the world.

She can remember thinking that it wasn’t quite that funny, but mostly she remembers feeling relived that it wasn’t her. That she was allowed to stay, that she was “good”. 

I am sorry, she wants to write, but she can't. She can deal with the fact that some of the very recent things that she did haven't been quite as noble as she'd like to imagine. She can't deal with the knowledge that she has been tainted from the very start.

_> Cheap price to pay for a million dollars_ she writes and knows that she’s lashing out, knows she'll be horrified by herself in 0.1 seconds (she already is by the time she’s pressed the button).

_> Still better than selling your soul for a pat on the back_ is his answer before the screen goes black.

She cries herself to sleep that night, and come morning swears to never think about it again.

She keeps track of people she used to know. Not on the hacker community - their collective hive mind is much more adept at keeping her out than her feeble solitary attempts to break in could be. She tracks Fitz – he never talks to his mom and only interacts with the world when he buys some equipment sometimes (she knew this all before, but is now struck by the realization of how unhealthy all this isolation must be for him). Simmons has stopped talking to her family as well, and is seemingly unaware of the fact that her parents are considering filing her disappearance with the police. She doesn't look into Coulson's and May's lives - it feels like sacrilege. 

She doesn't have enough info on her biological father to start searching. The photo she found of him is somewhere in an evidence vault at the Palyground, and she kind of rues never having made a private copy for herself.

She thinks about tracking Ward, puts it off a couple of times, only to cave one early morning after a sleepless night and learn that Ward has made himself pretty much untraceable. 

She traces “Kara Palamas” instead. It's not easy, but she does discover that there are times when the woman just unabashedly goes by her own name. It feels like she's making a statement, a rather personal one. She seems to enjoy flaunting her own name even at the risk of being tracked. “Rose Andersen” sits in her van and thinks that she can understand the other woman a little.

Kara Palamas becomes quite visible in mid December, and Skye latches onto that (she has nothing better to do, sadly). It's difficult to know what exactly Agent 33 is doing in Argentina, as there are dozens of hot spots there and none look either bad enough or innocent enough to be the doing of a super ex agent. The woman isn't with Ward anymore, and that intrigues Skye enough to keep watching. 

Two weeks later, Miss Palamas suddenly books a long and very expensive flight into Sharm-el-Sheik. There are no hotspots there, if one discounts some human trafficking cell having been dismantled by the local police one week prior. Skye looks out at the snow covering the parking lot she's been using for her van for the last two days, and logs onto a popular travel site.

Sharm-el-Sheik seems like a very neat place, and having time for herself in a warm, happy and touristy place makes Skye perk up for the first time in weeks. She buys herself some dark glasses and some new tops on a whim, and does a bit of sight seeing. Sadly, the fun comes to an end as she's made by her target even before coming to the task of establishing surveillance on her. There is a sharp pain behind Skye's ear and she’s stupid enough to think it’s her hair being tangled with the glasses, and then the world goes dark. When it blinks back into focus, she is lying on the hard floor of what looks like a pretty fancy hotel suit, and Agent 33 is drying her hair in the nearby bathroom. There is a strong smell of hair products in the air. Skye would suppose the woman is attempting to conceal her identity, except her actual look is more of an eye-catcher than a camouflaging attempt. The red backless dress on the bed adds to the attention-seeking theory. Maybe she's come here to work some rich sheik after all. 

Before Skye can work this out and start thinking about getting up (she’s quite dizzy from whatever move was used on her), the older agent crosses the space between them in three long strides and points a plain looking gun at her forehead. 

“What do you want from Ward now,” she demands curtly, and Skye is taken aback for a second but not more than that, because it actually makes some sense. They don’t know each other except for the brief fighting sequence Skye has somehow managed to survive and the silent crossing of paths after the surgery all these months ago. The woman must know her as Ward’s ex crush slash nemesis or something.

“Nothing,” she answers. 

She expects the other woman to be angry, or violent, or distrustful, but the truth is – she’s as inexpressive right now as May always is. The gun never wavers, and Skye feels incredibly stupid because here she is – an ex SHIELD agent, a potential weapon of mass destruction, a girl who can make earthquakes, at the mercy of a simple gun. None of her so called powers come in handy - she’s learned to focus her energy into objects, but only barely, and some feeble vibrations won’t even distract a seasoned agent. And she doesn’t even think about making an earthquake. It will kill both of them as surely as anything – she doesn’t even know how high or how low of a floor this is, and wonders briefly how did the woman manage to get her into the room in the first place.

Agent 33 looks down at her with a scowl and a sigh, like Skye’s the world’s biggest inconvenience and not a reasonable threat. If it’s a psychological game, the woman is winning hand down because Skye doesn’t feel like a threat. She doesn’t want to examine her feelings to check if she maybe does feel like an inconvenience. 

“How many of your dear friends have solemnly sworn to put Ward down if he ever came near you?” the woman asks, scowling again. Skye scowls as well. 

“Enough,” she bits acidly. The smile of Agent Palamas is a predatory one, like she’s delighted at the answer.

“And how many of them would actually be able to fulfil that promise?”

Skye thinks of Simmons, who weights about as much as a wet kitten, and keeps quiet. May could, maybe. Except May is a superior, not a friend. She’d gladly kill Ward under Coulson’s orders or by her own volition, but she wouldn’t do it for Skye.

“All of Ward´s friends are both wiling and able to put you down, should the need arise,” smiles Kara, and the message is clear on the several levels it has been communicated on. 

Things escalate quickly after that. There is a knock on the door which doesn’t make the woman turn – she’s been expecting it. She levels her gun, and it must have a wonderful silencer because Skye doesn’t hear the shot. In fact, she doesn’t hear or feel much of anything anymore.

She comes back again much later. Hours have passed. There is a smell of gun powder in the air, and it takes her some time to remember that she’s not in the middle of a warzone, but in the middle of a New Year celebration. The smell is from fireworks. The fireworks themselves are no longer seen or heard, so the midnight has come and gone. One window of the suite is open, and she crawls toward it (the night night gun is a goddamn disgrace, whoever sold it as having no ill effects deserves to have themselves shot in the face on daily basis). It’s still dark outside, but tropically warm, and she can hear laughter and shrieks outside, and the general silliness and drunkenness of touristy places.  
People chatter on the illuminated street in little and big groups, and she feels a sharp, unwanted pang of envy toward each and every one of these anonymous, innocent souls who have never known a weight of a gun nor laid a hand in anger on another human being. 

“You’re clean,” Agent 33 says as she opens the door and comes inside. Her dress is both better adjusted and a bit mangled from hours of partying, it seems. Skye does a double take, incredulous of the fact that the woman left her alone and unbound for hours and apparently went partying – and checking her captive’s background after that. “I’ll check with Ward, see if he’s available.”

“I didn’t come to talk to him,” says Skye, and it feels like she’d said it a hundred times already. 

“Well, you can’t have been so stupid as to come here to talk to me,” says Kara both scratchingly and yet quite reasonably, and maybe, just maybe all these conversations were only in Skye’s head. Maybe she’s only been telling herself that, and she feels small and vulnerable all of a sudden, a runaway rookie with less than one year experience in front of a woman who’s been working the field for over ten years. A woman who probably knows loneliness and betrayal and abandonment much better than Skye herself. 

¨Come,” says the woman before exiting the room without paying her any more attention. 

Skye follows numbly. She isn’t´ going to make a scene, or attack. In a way, she’s relieved to have been made and not having to hide anymore. 

They ride the elevator downstairs, and Kara surveys the lobby for a while before grinning winningly. She whips a phone and places a call that is answered almost immediately, which prompts Skye to look closer in the direction the other woman is looking. She can see Ward walking through the lobby in the opposite direction, or at least a part of him that is visible through the thick floral decorations spread through the hotel. He’s wearing the manly equivalent of Kara’s gala dress: some slick suit with a couple of buttons open and a tie that’s nowhere to be seen. 

It’s not like Skye needs to be taught the meaning of open collars and missing ties at 7 am. And it’s not like the relaxed, casual set of his shoulders doesn’t tell a story on its own. She still keeps staring, because a relaxed Ward is something she’s not even remotely accustomed to. The entirety of his body language is alien to her – even when she hears Kara tell him “Skye is here” and waits for him to tense and signal his discomfort, she gets none. He just answers something into his phone and cuts the conversation.

“Let’s go get coffee,” Agent Palamas intones, and it’s officially the most surreal day in Skye’s life since Puerto Rico.

The woman makes her get out to the street and walk to a hidden joint with the excuse that the coffee is generally horrible and one must know where to get the good one. Her casual chatting is uncomfortable in all the ways the goddamned woman wants it to be, but it’s not like Skye can do anything. Truth be told, she doesn’t care in the slightest about the particularities of 33’s and Ward’s present lives. The simple fact that they are casually having each other’s backs while managing to enjoy doing simple human stuff is enough to bring angry tears to her eyes, if she lets herself dwell on it. She remembers the Bus and playing Scrabble during their off clock nights. She remembers making sandwiches for everyone, unprompted. Planning Halloween scares. Being happy. 

Why exactly did she think it’d always be like that, she isn’t very sure. It’s not like joining SHIELD didn’t come with a pre-announced “being one of us will require you to be against everyone else” clause. It’s not like one half of these people she made sandwiches for didn’t work on perfecting weapons that the other half then used on assets deemed too uncomfortable or too powerful to be let alive. It’s not like she didn’t know it all before she even infiltrated them. It’s not like she hadn’t been one heartbeat, one Coulson’s whim away from ending exactly like Miles. 

She’d sacrificed everything to protect a mirage that was never real, and has been left with nothing. Even Ward, whom she had long ago deemed unable of independent thought, had seen it way before her. She finds herself seething at the idea that he got away so cleanly, that he has found himself a friend, while she’s been trying and trying and trying and has been left with nothing. 

They get their coffees to the ballroom of the hotel, which is almost completely empty. There is some semblance of order on the table of Ward’s choosing, and he has the gall to smile a little when they come join him there. The smile seems to be mostly for Kara and the coffee, but there is a tiny amount for Skye too. The seething intensifies to the uncomfortable point where she wants to make the ballroom shake and dance, and watch the both of them run from her in fear.

She opens the conversation announcing that she’s a now free agent, and he has the gall to look completely surprised by the news. She’s expected him to proclaim that he always knew she’d see the light, but he mentions Coulson in the next breath and goes on musing about how it is completely understandable of her to have tried to cling to him all the way. It’s a discourse probably meant to be soft and reasonable and soothing, but Skye feels something else entirely. Until then, it’s only been inside her mind – her own voice calling her weak, dependent, gullible. Now Ward seems to be seeing right through her, and she doesn’t… She can’t let herself be seen that way. She puts on a smile (it’s ugly and broken, she can feel it) and shows him just what she’s able to do. Makes the bottle on the table tremble, shows him how dangerous she is now. Makes the unspoken and untrue implication that her powers is why she left, and hopes she can shake him off the trail of the clingy, stupid and naïve girl she’s been all this time. 

Anything to avoid Ward’s serene, patient expression that says that he knows, that he’s also been there before. To avoid the horror of the comprehension that Phil Coulson has ever been but her own version of John Garrett. 

Nothing in her life is going like it should, it seems. Her display of powers fails to scare them off. Ward seems to be sincerely fascinated by them, and her big words about being able to provoke earthquakes don’t do squat to rid him of his enthusiasm. He and Kara promptly engage in a surreal and gleeful discussion on how any of them couls easily destroy a town, if they wanted to, and it’s not funny. It’s just not, and Skye’s shaking and she can’t even name the reason why. She’s angry at herself, at them, at Coulson, and if she could - maybe she’s just erase them with her wrath. Except that she already tried that once, didn’t she? Struck out blindly in anger? Powers, gun and words, she used it all with the intention to hurt, and all it ever got her was a nightmarish death toll that nobody – not SHIELD, not Coulson - would shoulder for her. 

She curls into a ball and tries to shut out the memories of people being buried alive, of bullets hitting flesh, of infinite boiling anger. She can resent SHIELD and her chain of command all she wants, but it’s no good. It’s still on her. She did it. Mined her anger and unleashed it. She knows that she’s crying stupidly, that she’s sitting on the floor and there’s a pair of hands around her, and there goes her attempt at dignity and pretending like she's in charge of her own life. She doens't care, though. She is just tired of all this, of bravely holding out way past her breaking point. She understands now that, even if she wants, even if she tries to, nothing ever can be made alright, and all that’s left for her is to wish for herself to stop existing, stop screwing up, stop being such a failure, stop even be there. 

Ward tells her that they'll figure it all out and she wants to hit him for his lying, except that she’s encased in his arms and she can’t do that, not really. She does proceed to hiss at him, set to explain what he can do with his newfound serenity and demand that he leaves her the hell alone, but he only looks up at her reproachfully. 

“My leg’s gone numb,” he says, and it’s incongruent enough to break though the cycle of her mounting hysteria and make her move up and away from him. He tries to follow but winces and extends his hand. “Please help me up?”

Skye stares, floundering a little. Deep down, she recognises that he’s just playing her, giving her a menial task to pull her mind out of a self destructing loop (yet deeper down, she refuses to think about how and where he got his highly tuned awareness of such destructing mental states). It feels like a deja-vu – Ward on the floor and she standing over him -, except she doesn’t know of which of the two moments. There was that one time he’d almost fell out of the Bus, back when she was a useless rookie and she still managed to save him (you and I, wrong foot, she’d smiled then and pulled him to his feet). Or that another time she walked past him, in control and all-powerful (never turn your back to the enemy, she’s hissed then and left without looking back). 

This time, she takes his hand and pulls him up, and somehow such a simple move goes a long way to make the memory of San Juan fade. 

“You and I, wrong foot,” she says shakily, and feels pretty much like a full mental case who’d just made her first baby step in therapy when she’s rewarded with a bright smile and an awkward pat between her shoulder blades. She barks a laugh that becomes a cry that becomes something else when he pulls her to him and starts walking them in the direction of the elevators. “Let’s wait till evening for that drink, OK?” 

“OK.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie - I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find inspiration for these fics. The joy of being a fan of AOS is pretty much gone at this point, but I'm working really hard at finishing at least this series. Hopefully I've managed to give Skye some catharsis after everything she's been through in this particular fic, the poor thing. 
> 
> I'll do my best to deliver the last piece of actual Skyeward I have in mind, set far enough in the future that all these troubles will be already dealt with and we can get some flufyness and sweetness.


End file.
